When we think of team selling, we imagine a room with the buyers on one side of the table and we are lined up on the other.  There is another type of team selling and that is taking place before we get anywhere near the client.  It might be working together as a Sales Mastermind panel to brainstorm potential clients to target or strategising campaigns or plotting the approach to adopt with a buyer.  Salespeople earn their remuneration through a combination of base salary and commission or bonus in Japan.  There are very few jobs here in sales, which are 100% commission, simply because salespeople don’t have to accept that model.  There is always a demand here for salespeople and in fact the declining population is keeping a lot of dud salespeople afloat.

Given there is not much 100% commission selling going on, there is also not so much salesperson competition going on with each other.  There is competition, but the losers usually don’t get fired, as they might in some Western business environments.  So the opportunity is there to collaborate more on approaches to the client and generating more business.  What often happens though is, salespeople tend to operate from within their own little castles.  They have their moat around their existing clients, which they serve and they spend their time trying to find new clients by themselves.  They may have sales managers, but in these modern times, sales managers are expected to produce revenues as well.  That means there isn't a lot of coaching going on.

If we have one person looking at the client through the prism of their own experience, things get a bit thin quickly, if that person doesn’t have such a wealth of experience.  It would be more logical to gather a team of salespeople together and look at the best approach for that client, rather than relying on the best efforts of a single person.  But we don’t do this very often.  This tends to be because of a territorial concept, where each salesperson has their clients and they should take care of them, without wasting anyone’s time, especially when they are getting paid a commission or a bonus, for the sale.

This does make sense at one level, but we are missing out on the sum of the parts being able to exceed the whole here.  This is often a culture issue within sales teams.  If you run things with tight individual accountability, it is hard to get other salespeople to assist a colleague.  As leaders we need to establish a framework for teamwork even in a commission based world of focused individual benefit.  The money getting paid out doesn’t change, but the time becomes the sticking point.  How do we get salespeople to spend time to help others be more successful?

One way to do this it to treat a particular client as a project and pull in other salespeople to work on the best approach. Once the salesperson in question has spoken with the client, then we need to gather the Sales Mastermind together again and brainstorm what would be the ideal solution.  This should be one of the tasks for the sales manager, but often they are swamped with their own clients and trying to keep the whole sales team coordinated and moving forward.  Breaking out time for one-on-one discussions may simply not be happening and the salespeople are often left to their own devices.

When we approach this on the project level, the time required becomes contained and less oppressive for the other salespeople.  It is also a case of quid pro quo too, because it will be their turn to benefit next time, from having more heads than one tackling client problems and helping match the best solutionS.  This is where the sales manager can play a role in setting up the project teams and monitoring progress. 

It is good for the salespeople because one day they will become sales managers and will need to introduce similar systems into their own teams.  Funnily enough, we often have the experience of learning a lot ourselves, when we are working on someone else’s problem.  We can be too close to our own issues and be blind to aspects which could have an important bearing, but we cannot see the wood for the trees.  Somehow looking at another’s problem brings clarity for us about our own contemplations.

There are many benefits to using Sales Masterminds from within the team, working together for the best outcomes for the client.  There is an education process going on both up and down the scale of experience, as we all come away from the process that little better educated in our craft.

I was studying an online learning programme from Professor Scott Galloway, where he talked about Appealing To Human Instincts.  His take was from the strategy angle, but I realised that this same framework would be useful for sales too.  In sales we do our best to engage the client.  We try to develop sophisticated questions to help us unearth the stated and unstated needs of the buyer.  Professor Galloway's pedagogical construct can give us another perspective on buyer dynamics.

The first Human Instinct nominated was the brain.  This is our logos, our rational, logical, analytical mode.  What are the unanswered questions and key internal conversations occupying the minds of our buyers.  If we can meet the buyer in their thought process, then we are more likely to be able to understand their needs and then be in a position to meet those needs. 

We know that some buyers will be analytical types, for whom three decimal places is unremarkable when considering data.  Often though salespeople are big picture. Macro types who shun this level of detail because they feel it is boring.  They love the sale and abhor the paperwork which goes along with it.  I had two insurance salesmen in my home trying to get me to buy various policies.  What astounded me was they were middle aged, well experienced gentlemen and yet they couldn’t fill out the paperwork correctly, so we had to do it again.  They loved the conversation with me but not the conversation with the fine print in the contract.

The next instinct was the heart.  Our emotions are there for all to see, if the right stimulation is provided. We laugh, cry, get angry, become determined and give up, based around our emotional configuration at any point in the day.  Salespeople walk into a mine field of buyer emotions, with no way of knowing which particular configuration we have bumped into today.  Our job is to gauge as quickly as possible where the buyer is emotionally and how they prefer to communicate at that moment.  We know our tempers once frayed, tend to trigger a supreme impatience with everything.  Woe be tied a salesperson who cannot “kuki wo yomu” or read the air, as we say in Japanese, to understand this client needs another visit on a better day for them.

Instinct number three was the gut.  This reminded me of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where survival was at the bottom and became the prism through which information and ideas were judged.  Company buyers are always bound firmly by risk reduction, budget stringencies, cash flow imperatives and fears for the future.  Everyone loves a bargain except salespeople, especially those salespeople who have commissions attached to the sale price.  Value is the only antidote for this price discount swamp fever infecting buyers.  Babbling on about features won’t cut it.  Yet amazingly this is the step where many salespeople check out.  They never even attempt to consider scaling the summit. We had better migrate up the value scale and talk about the application of the benefits.   We need to lock in the evidence where this has worked magnificently somewhere else, for this buyer to feel safe that there are precedents.

The fourth instinct was sex appeal.  Buyers want to attract attention to themselves as capable, highly promotable, sexy beasts attracting a lot of favourable accord.  Our role is to make them look like heroes, legends, masters of the universe.  They want to elevate their worth, status and value within the organisation.  “Look at me, I am clever” they want to say. We become their instrument to promote that message by giving them our product or service, which becomes a game changer inside the client company.

Salespeople have to be master jugglers, elevating many balls in the air at the same time.  We need to see our buyers in a holistic manner, to fully appreciate the tack we need to take buyer by buyer, because they are all different.  This takes a change in the sales mindset because most salespeople are focused on themselves, their commission, their Beemer upgrade and a thousand other things, which the buyer couldn’t care less about. 

So next time we sit down with a buyer, we need to make sure we are engaging all of their human instincts and appealing to them from many angles. 

Group crowdsourcing has been around since cave dweller days.  Gathering a crowd of prospects and getting them to buy your stuff is a standard method of making more sales or starting conversations which hopefully will lead to sales.  Trade shows provide booths but also speaking events, if you pay more dough to attend.  These days the event will most likely be online rather than in person, but the basics are common.  “We all love to buy but we don’t want to be sold”, should be a mantra all salespeople embrace, especially with selling from the stage.

The common approach at events is to provide a lot of information, generally the features of the product and then trot out the sales pitch at the end.  As an audience, we brace ourselves because we see the switch from value to pitch coming. Mentally, we get our sceptic hat out and put it on ready for the sales blurb. When you think about it this is a pretty dumb approach.

The giving value first idea is a good one, but why separate the value from the pitch at the end?  Why not integrate the two together, so there is no audience bracing required?  It all comes back to design.  We have all grown up with the explanation, then pitch model, so we tend to just accept that is how it is done.  This is even though on other occasions as audience members ourselves, we are experiencing that “brace yourself” mental switch.  It is a bit strange isn’t it, so why not learn from our own experience and make a change for the better.

The talk will be broken down into chapters.  Chapter One is the opening. This is where we have to say something that snaps a distracted, sceptical audience member out of their social media induced coma and gets them to listen to us.  We may share a really surprising piece of high value data or information.  We might tell a gripping story that attracts the audience.  We might ask a devilish question that completely consumes the attention of the audience.

Next we start to move into some features of the solution we are proffering and critically, we must link these to the applied benefits.  We do this by using examples of what other buyers have done with our solution so that the audience can draw a direct line between the purchase and the benefit.  These claims have to be backed up with solid evidence or it comes across as salesperson hot air. 

At this point we need to ask a question which gets the audience thinking about their situation.  It must be subtle, rather than bold outbursts like “You should have this shouldn’t you?”.  Rather we can say, “can you see an area of your business where this widget would increase revenues or reduce costs?”.  We then say nothing and let that question hang in the air, to allow the audience to focus on it and make a mental evaluation for themselves.

We will keep repeating this formula in each chapter – feature, benefit, application of the benefit, evidence and then a subtle question.  We can't keep repeating the exact same question every time, because that sounds ridiculous, so we need a stock of these.  Others could be, “Thinking about some of your strategies for your business, can you see where having this widget would help advance the business for you?”, or “Even incremental advances are welcome, so can you see where you could gain a five, ten or fifteen percent improvement in results through applying this widget to your business?”, or “Business is super competitive today so stealing a march on your rivals is always a challenge.  Can you see an avenue through using this widget which will differentiate you from your competitors in the minds of your buyers?”.

By the time we get to the end of our presentation, we will have used a variety of questions which will resonate differently with each of our potential clients, because not all of their situations are identical.  We need to use this insight when we are designing our questions, hoping at least one will hit the bullseye for a particular client. 

We finish off with inviting members of the audience to stay back and chat, if they found some solutions to their business issues from our talk.  At no point could the audience members “brace for impact” from our sales pitch.  We have eliminated resistance to what we are saying.  We have also come across as a company who focuses on value for clients and are not a collection of rabid shysters, spivs, hucksters and dodgy carnival barkers.  Even if they don’t buy from us today, our reputation will have been enhanced and they are more likely to look favourably on us in the future.

Japanese salespeople should love to hear “that sounds pricey” from buyers.  Why?  Because they know that this statement is the most common objection to arise in response to their sales presentation and they are completely ready for it.  It is one of the simplest buyer pushback answers to deal with too.  Well, simple that is, if you are trained in sales and know what you are doing.  Untrained salespeople really make a big hot mess of this one.  They want to argue the point about pricing with the buyer.  Or they want to use their force of will to bully the buyer into buying.  Or they want to use one of those American style aggressive response statements, to try and push the deal over the line.  This is all nonsense.

The only words emerging from our lips should be “Thank you.  May I ask you why you say that?”.  We could say something else like “compared to what?”, which is a pretty snappy rejoinder, but it is a bit too aggressive in this situation and doesn't really yield enough information about buyer thinking.  We could simply drop the price to be “competitive”, but that is the mark of the weak, whining, unwashed, pathetic salesperson.  We need to do better than that, unless that proffered discount is directly linked to certain purchase volume prerequisites.

When we first hear “that sounds pricey” we may feel some pressure to justify our numbers.  That is totally the wrong way of thinking.  That number of ours is there for a reason.  There is a justification for that number, based on the value it provides.  There are plenty of clients willing and happy to pay that number for the goods or services they receive in exchange.

When we sweetly ask why they say that, we now have moved the pressure for justification back to the buyer. This is called “tossing back the porcupine”.  The comment “pricey” is like a spiky porcupine being thrown to us and it is tricky to handle, without incurring lots of pain. We ask “why” thus shooting the porcupine back to the buyer and we can sit there cool calm and collected and listen to what they have to say.  This is important because we need to use our highest level of empathetic listening to comprehend what they are saying, in order to understand what is really on their mind. 

Our object in sales is to meet the buyer in the conversation they are having in their own mind. That will be a compilation of their current situation, their experiences to date, their personal situation and a million other factors which we will never be privy to. Asking them that “why” question gives us the chance to tune in to what is important for them and to alert us to factor in things which we hadn’t considered before.

I was given that price pushback for some training I was proposing to the HR team at a Japanese company.  I asked them the “why” question and then just sat there stone cold silent.  They did not reply immediately. It was one of those long uncomfortable silences for foreigners.  Fortunately, I have learned to become comfortable with silence in Japan.  After what seemed an absolute age, they explained that they are given a quarterly budget for training and my number was over that quarterly limit.

Did I rail against the inequity of having such dopey quarterly budgets or rage that they should change their entire budgeting system and get that accounting  department better geared up to suit my preferred pricing?  No. I sweetly asked, “If we could spread the payment across two quarters, would that be of any help?” and again I shut up and didn’t say one more word.  They looked at each other and I saw a light get switched on inside their heads and they said that would work.  So, it wasn’t too pricey after all.  It was too much price for that arbitrary temporal unit called a quarter of the year.

After the buyer tells us all the good reasons why our price is too high, we need to be packing heavy with our value justification for the number we have just quoted.  This is why salespeople need to be well prepared and practice for this “that sounds pricey” pushback.  Trying to wing it and produce some intellectual and articulation magic on the spot is possible. Unlikely though, especially when your brain is frozen with fear getting that infamous pushback.

Recently a multinational client wanted presentation training in Japan, after having conducted training in APAC with another provider who was based out of Hong Kong.  They were unable to deliver in Japan so the client contacted us.  I gave them my proposal and they told me my number was “pricey”.  When I sweetly asked “why”, they not so sweetly told me that the other vendor did the exact same training for a price significantly at a discount to what I was proposing.  They said that I should match this other provider, whom I had never heard of. 

I checked them out. They didn’t have a 109 year history of teaching presentation skills, a track record of 58 years in Japan, teach 90% of the Fortune 500 companies, have 200 branches in over 100 countries, teach in 35 languages, have ISO 9001 certification, require their trainers to undergo 250 hours of train-the-trainer instruction for their first license, have a trainer who had personally delivered 545 public speeches, appear in the Training Industry Top 20 training companies and on and on it went.  You get the idea. 

In the end, I suggested we do a demo session with the key decision makers, so that they could comfortably recommend us to their executives, at the price I required.  The demo blew them away, because now they could directly compare us with the other vendor.  We did the training and achieved a 9.3/10 Net Promoter Score and a Voice Of Customer score of 92.8/100, which are very high scores, thoroughly justifying the investment.  Yes, I am bragging, but the point is we have numbers we can quote back to clients in order to brag.  We do the satisfaction surveys for our professional work, so we can justify the value of our training, at the price point we nominate.

When professional salespeople hear “that sounds pricey” they remain extremely calm, because they know what to say and how to justify their pricing.  How about your sales team?  Are they like deers in the headlights when they get pushback or are they legends of value explanation to buyers?